Topeka’s city government is evaluating its procurement process, city media relations coordinator Molly Hadfield said Friday.
The examination comes at a time when Mayor Michelle De La Isla is calling for the city to implement legislation that would give preference to local companies in the city’s procurement decisions.
The procurement process evaluation has put negotiations on hold between the city and JEO Consulting Group Inc., a Nebraska-based company with a Lawrence office, which city officials chose to do the design work for a project to improve an intersection along the Wanamaker corridor.
Officials with JEO are patiently waiting for Topeka’s city government to carry out that evaluation, and recognize that cities sometimes need to examine the way they do things, said Jim Tobaben, JEO’s senior transportation manager in Lawrence, on Friday.
Topeka’s city government used a qualifications-based selection process, which is common throughout Kansas, as it picked JEO to do the design work for an upcoming project to make street improvements in and around the intersection of S.W. Huntoon and Wanamaker Road, Tobaben said.
The next step in that process generally involves the city’s negotiating with the company it chose regarding the scope of the project and the fees to be paid, he said.
But city officials told JEO they were putting those talks on hold as they evaluate the city’s procurement process, Tobaben said.
Though JEO Consulting has no office in Topeka, Tobaben said some of its employees work here and the company brings “a lot of fresh ideas” to the table. Tobaben, a former Kansas Department of Transportation official, added that he has lived and worked in this area for about 40 years.
Topeka’s city government has been evaluating its procurement process “for several months” in order to maintain best practices and a high quality of service, Hadfield said Friday.
The Topeka Capital-Journal learned about the procurement process evaluation Thursday when it received a response to a Kansas Open Records Act request it submitted seeking information regarding the project at S.W. Huntoon and Wanamaker.
Catherine Walter, senior assistant city attorney, denied the request, writing that the city was evaluating its procurement process and had not made a decision on that project.
The city was consequently not obligated to provide the information the newspaper was seeking because of a Kansas statute “which exempts from disclosure ’sealed bids and related documents, until a bid is accepted or all bids rejected,’” Walter wrote.
Hadfield said Friday the city is looking at its procurement process in order to help it collect better data and effectively rate bids that come in for contracts while helping to improve its overall process for procurement.
The city is working with Bloomberg Philanthropies’ “What Works Cities” initiative, a service it receives free of charge, to develop a scorecard to use to rate bidders during procurement, Hadfield added.
That scorecard would give preference in procurement decisions to local companies and firms that employ a diverse workforce, she said.
But the city would not choose a local company over an out-of-town one in some situations, such as if that meant the city had to spend “a million more dollars,” De La Isla said at a Jan. 28 news conference.
The mayor said that day that local preference legislation was being developed and would be considered “pretty soon” by the city’s governing body, which consists of De La Isla and the nine city council members.
“There’s a lot of members of our governing body that have expressed an interest in this,” she said.
No such legislation has been placed yet on the agenda for a city council meeting.
